We’ve had a lot of pets, and they’re my doing.
There would be no animals here if my wife was on her own; she couldn’t take care of them—she can’t suck algae water to save her life or pick up poop if she was paid for it; even remembering food and water would be a stretch.
But she hooked up with Dr Dolittle. So we have pets. I think they’re good for kids.
My spouse expected it. I’d worked in a pet store during high school; a job most teens would dump after two months because it wasn’t worth the minimum wage, but I cleaned cages for three years. I was totally more willing to stick my head into a cage full of flying, screeching, defecating budgerigars than work food service.
But my pet shop experience has given our kids an unfortunate out when it comes to pet care—they long ago discovered that no matter how much they say they’ll take care of a critter, whether lying like a log or seething with sincerity, I’ll do it in the end because I can’t stand seeing a guinea pig wallow in its own waste, and can do the job ten times better in half the time.
Over the last eighteen years we’ve had different kinds of pets:
- Siamese Fighting Fish
- Mice (one who died of cancer and two who injured each other mortally in mixed martial art free for all)
- A cockatiel
- 1 parakeet caught in a park
- Canaries
- Goldfish
- Finches
- 1 long-lived leopard gecko named Sweetie is interred in our freezer while awaiting a final resting place
- Rabbits
- Guinea pigs. I’d never been a fan of guinea pigs. I likened them to those multi-hued puff-balls on “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek—they squealed, they pooped, they bred. But then our daughter met Cocoa…
- Newts—this is where sucking algae comes in—nothing says love like the willingness to siphon fetid aquarium water to save your son’s ailing newt
- 1 bearded dragon
- 2 medicinal leeches. Yes, like in the middle-ages. Handy for keeping the blood flowing when reattaching body parts. We fed them raw hamburgers. They were cool.
- Hundreds of Australian leaf insects, which began as a packet of eggs purchased by my wife on a whim for one dollar. These pets weren’t my fault. The eggs hatched into hundreds of tiny stick-like insects who grew into hulking four-inch mutants needing a constant supply of blackberry vines. The seemingly innocuous males would burst into flight during cage cleanings, and even I scream when four-inch bugs are flying around and the air is buzzing with wings.
- Toads
- Poison dart frogs
- Pacific Chorus Frogs—before they were identified as an endangered species, honest!
- 1 really UGLY albino African Clawed Frog—it looked like a bloated dead thing and ate worms. The kids loved it.
Our kids are REALLY aware of the circle of life.
Right now we have 1 Siamese Fighting Fish and 2 dogs, one white puff-ball puppy and one ten-year-old Labrador who hasn’t grown up. It’s less that he’s still immature, but that he just doesn’t care. He’s an old man. He knows we’re not really going to do anything drastic if he steals food off the table or knocks someone out of the doorway when he wants to go first.
After eighteen years, I have learned something: three pets plus three kids are plenty.
